don's report archive
Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)
Friday October 19, 2001
Can a wellness promoter, a devotee of enjoyable, healthy, satisfying and purposeful quests for a peaceful and happy life favor a revolution? Are these goals not somewhat conflicting, to put it mildly? Not at all. Revolutions need not be military in nature, and nobody has to get hurt! The revolution I'm thinking about is a revolutionary sea-change reversal of our thinking as a society that would enable a return to an ethic of personal responsibility in America!
Peter Huber, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute (publisher of the work) with impressive credentials (a law degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT), suggests that many of the nation's greatest problems are directly attributable to misplaced accountability. His opus, entitled Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences, describes the transformation of modern tort law since the 1960s. Huber shows how the dramatic increase in liability lawsuits, which I have often mentioned as grotesque examples of the flight from self-responsibility, has had an adverse effect on safety, health, and the cost of insurance and individual rights. To paraphrase a law professor's comment that appears on the book jacket cover, "It should be read by everyone interested in (or appalled by) our legal system. To that, I would add—and everyone interested in a self-management lifestyle."
"Liability" describes hair-raising examples of a legal system that is out of control. It shows convincingly how the expanding tort liability system is raising the cost of living, threatening our international competitiveness and, worst of all, undermining our collective sense about who is accountable for the quality of our lives. In short, it hints at one of the reasons the average American is so inept at thinking and acting in a manner consistent with effective self-management.
Dr. Huber identifies the villain as the U.S. system of tort liability, and suggests it costs Americans as much as $300 billion a year. Forbes Magazine editorial writers concur; in a recent editorial, they term the responsibility crisis as a case of "legal mayhem."
Huber concludes that the tort liability system lowers the standard of living for everybody by raising the costs of doing business, making the medical system more dangerous than it already is, threatening our competitiveness abroad and reinforcing a worseness tendency that's already reached an epidemic proportion, namely, blaming somebody else for whatever goes awry in our personal lives. Columnist Howard Means writes that our people are losing their sense of shame that the lack of responsibility translates to a loss of common decency. Means suggests that when the "sense of shame breaks down, and it very nearly has, the law becomes nothing more than a grim laughing stock, a very dark gag."
How did all this happen? How did our once respected legal system go down the proverbial toilet? Who killed self-responsibility in America? Is this something we can pin on the Osama Bin Laden? Are the Chinese behind this? Who?
No, it came about gradually over the course of about three decades, while we grew complacent and chubby, while we watched too much television, smoked cigarettes, lost the commitment to vigorous daily exercise, accepted other people's dogmas about meaning and purpose and somehow failed to get enough DBRU equivalents, among other things. It also happened because we permitted our universities to turn out too many lawyers. A powerful coterie of the latter transformed existing tort liability into a legal lottery. To play, all you need is a mental or physical injury, real, imagined or conjured and, naturally, lawyers.
The latter were allowed to muck around with the norms of "cause," "fault," and "contracts." These norms were gradually replaced with norms that compensate "victims," regardless of who was responsible. The new norms allocated funds from those with the deepest pockets, usually insurance companies and big corporations, to those seen to be in need and, of course, their lawyers.
As a result of this pernicious shift to legal lotteries in the courtrooms, judges and juries now function as retailers dispersing payments to "victims" of cigarettes, hot coffee, lost psychic powers and so on.
Other countries are not paralyzed, as we are by the non-responsibility norm that prevails in our legal system, for which U.S. companies pay exorbitant insurance premiums. With lower overhead, they can offer lower prices and thereby out perform us. Worse, Huber claims "modern tort law weighs heavily on the spirit of innovation and enterprise." He doubts that Henry Ford or the Wright brothers would have been successful if they had been required to function in such a climate.
You can't change the world or the way the country is going by yourself, and even well-organized movements to change things (that you might want to join) take time. However, you can always strengthen your own responsibility norm by continuing to pursue being the best YOU imaginable.
I think Whitney Houston expressed the wellness option, the revolution most needed, in her hit song "One Moment in Time." When she sings: "I live to be the very best, I want it all, no time for less, I've laid my plans, now lay the chance, here in my hands, give me one moment in time", she reminds us that we do not have to play the legal lottery. We can be a part of a second American Revolution, this one to take back accountability for our actions and our lives. If enough of us insist on doing so, even the lawyers will have to follow suit. (Pun only slightly intended.)
Be well, have fun, be responsible and look on the bright side.
(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of mental health. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)
(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)
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